Tugs Of War And The Heart

Video/DVD - TOP RELEASE

**** Cold Mountain (Miramax; 154 minutes; rated R for violence and sexuality; $24.99 for VHS, $29.99 for DVD): Based on the Charles Frazier novel, Cold Mountain is an austere movie that asks you to make an imaginative leap or two.

Even though the heroes are Southerners during the Civil War, that seems accidental. At the center of the movie is a love story, one that's passionate and, at the same time, superficially chilly.

When we first encounter them, the strong-jawed Inman (Jude Law) and the well-bred Ada (Nicole Kidman) are only just getting to know each other. Inman's dignified shyness and the rigid social forms of the day keep the pair from moving too fast. Then, all at once, Inman is called off to war. Just moments before he leaves, he and Ada find one another and share a sudden, desperate embrace.

Will they ever see each other again?

Much of Cold Mountain shows what happens after a war-battered Inman attempts to find his way home to Ada. We follow his trek across hundreds of miles as he tries to avoid both Yankee soldiers and the Confederate forces that would shoot him as a deserter.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, Ada is alone and devastated. Lacking the skills to take care of herself, this delicate lady seems on the verge of collapse. Help arrives in the form of Ruby (Oscar winner Renee Zellweger), a strong and resourceful drifter who prods Ada into learning how to do what must be done.

Whatever else happens in Cold Mountain, we never forget that Inman and Ada love each other or, at least, that they believe that they do. It's that promise of love that helps Ada to survive and keeps Inman moving toward her.

Taking his cue from Frazier, director Anthony Minghella expects you to make the effort to enter the minds of these characters. And he refuses to fall back on cliches to help you along.

With so many characters, locations and emotions swirling around Cold Mountain, it's a tribute to the rich cinematography of John Seale that the look of the film is varied and unifying. Even visually, the production manages to suggest the complexity, depth and intensity of its themes.

Underneath the movie's cold surface, Cold Mountain turns out to be a volcano.